Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Housing Choice, Transportation Equity, And Access To Opportunities In Refugee And Immigrant Communities, Diane Mitschke, Anne Nordberg, Stephen Mattingly, Katherine Kitchens

TREC Final Reports

Mobility directly impacts access to opportunities for all protected classes; however, transportation planning and public transit agencies and housing authorities rarely coordinate affordable housing and the transportation system planning decisions. This lack of coordination often leads to mismatches between access to opportunities and affordable housing. Safe access to employment, quality schools, and healthcare represent a few of the many factors that may influence housing choice. For most households with budget constraints, all of these factors may not be achievable. While existing research documents the mismatch between affordable housing and access to opportunities, the role that mobility plays in residential selection …

App-Based Data Collection To Characterize Latent Transportation Demand Within Marginalized And Underserved Populations, Noelle L. Fields, Courtney Cronley, Stephen Mattingly, Nicole Iroz-Elardo, David Levine, Nithisha Gudipati, Cristine Highfill, Mary Kris Stringfelllow, Anna O'Dell, Rebecca Cole, Melody Huslage

TREC Final Reports

Our interdisciplinary team refined an app prototype, MyAmble, to gather data related to quantity of transportation disadvantage and latent demand, and to identify psycho-social-economic corollaries. MyAmble utilizes a traditional travel diary format but expands the type of trips measured to include 1) completed trips, 2) missed trips, and 3) latent travel demand. The app also measures the real-time perceived impact of transportation behaviors (realized and latent) on participants’ physical health, mental health, social engagement, and employment/academics. Finally, the app has a text-messaging feature, Travel Buddy, that is used to increase participant engagement and retention over longitudinal data collection. The project …

Understanding Connections Between Mobility, Transportation, And Quality Of Life In Refugee Communities In Tucson, Arizona, Orhon Myadar, Arlie Adkins, Maia Ingram, Nicole Iroz-Elardo

TREC Final Reports

In this multidisciplinary research project we aimed to study mobility challenges that refugees in Tucson, AZ, experience after their resettlement. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected from interviews and survey data, we argue that mobility shapes the ways refugees foster social connections, attain employment and access educational opportunities. Accordingly, barriers to mobility negatively impact refugees’ perception of well-being in post resettlement. However, these challenges are not experienced evenly. Nor are refugees passive subjects who lack agency in overcoming various barriers they experience. The study reveals the resilience of the refugee community in navigating the intersectional challenges they confront related to …

Transportation Behavior Among Older Vietnamese Immigrants In The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex: Well-Being, Geospatial Mobility, And Potential Indicators For Ride Providers’ Geospatial Burden, Rebecca L. Mauldin, Stephen Mattingly, Mahshid Haque, John P. Connolly, Latisha Thomas, Zachary Tarbet, Farzana Chowdhury, Rupal Parekh

TREC Final Reports

Nearly 4.6 million immigrants aged 65 and older live in the United States. This population is expected to more than triple in size by 2050. A lack of culturally appropriate transportation solutions for older immigrants creates disparities in access to services for older immigrant populations, increasing their risk of social isolation and reduced physical and mental health. A growing number of older immigrants live in low-density urban environments, which are characterized by high automobile dependency and limited public transportation. In these environments, older immigrants are likely to depend on others to provide private transportation. Negative aspects of this reliance on …

Sustaining Multimodal Choices: Examining Travel Behavior For Non-Work Trips Beyond Covid-19, Yizhao Yang, Rebecca Lewis

TREC Final Reports

Increasing the usage of sustainable travel modes requires changes in both environmental and psychological dimensions. A knowledge gap exists concerning the mechanism via which various factors interact to shape travel decision. Gaining such knowledge requires our ability to examine people’s behavioral adjustment in reaction to environmental and psychological changes or interventions.

This project uses COVID-19 as a natural experiment, treating the significant disruption induced by the pandemic as an intervention to study changes in travel behaviors and adoption of different travel choices following the COVID pandemic. This project builds upon a 2020 study conducted by the PI’s. It adopts a …

Pedestrian Behavior Study To Advance Pedestrian Safety In Smart Transportation Systems Using Innovative Lidar Sensors, Taylor Li, Sirisha M. Kothuri, Katherine L. Keeling, Xianfeng Terry Yang, Farzana R. Chowdhury

TREC Final Reports

Pedestrian safety is critical to improving walkability in cities. Although walking trips have increased in the last decade, pedestrian safety remains a top concern. In 2020, 6,516 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes, representing the most deaths since 1990 (NHTSA, 2020). Approximately 15% of these occurred at signalized intersections where a variety of modes converge, leading to the increased propensity of conflicts. Current signal timing and detection technologies are heavily biased towards vehicular traffic, often leading to higher delays and insufficient walk times for pedestrians, which could result in risky behaviors such as noncompliance. Current detection systems for pedestrians at …

Rural Gentrification And The Spillover Effect: Integrated Transportation, Housing, And Land Use Challenges And Strategies In Gateway Communities, Danya Rumore, Philip Stoker

TREC Final Reports

Small towns and cities near national parks, public lands, and other natural amenities throughout the West are experiencing rapid growth and increased visitation. These “gateway communities” comprise a significant portion of the rural West, constituting about 31% of all communities and more than 60% of those under 25,000 people. Our prior NITC-funded research shows that growth and increased tourism create a range of “big city challenges” for gateway communities, particularly a significant increase in housing prices, which pushes the local workforce to outlying areas and other rural communities. As a result, despite being small towns, many developed gateway communities have …

Network Effects Of Disruptive Traffic Events, Juan Medina, Xiaoyue Cathy Liu

TREC Final Reports

Current traffic management strategies are based on expected conditions caused by recurring congestion (e.g., by time of day, day of week), and can be very effective when provisions are also given for reasonable variations from such expectations. However, traffic variations due to non-recurrent events (e.g., crashes) can be much larger and difficult to predict, making also challenging efforts to identify, measure, and forecast their disruptive effects. This project explores a proactive approach to deploy a tool for managing non-recurrent congestion by identifying and quantifying the effects of disruptive traffic events at a microscopic level using a comprehensive set of data …

Enabling Decision-Making In Battery Electric Bus Deployment Through Interactive Visualization, Xiaoyue Cathy Liu, Gabrielius Kudirka, Biao Kuang, Yirong Zhou, Jianlin Chen

TREC Final Reports

The transit industry is rapidly transitioning to battery-electric fleets because of the direct environmental and financial benefits they could offer, such as zero emissions, less noise, and lower maintenance costs. Yet the unique spatiotemporal characteristics associated with transit system charging requirements, as well as various objectives when prioritizing the fleet electrification, requires the system operators and/or decision-makers to fully understand the status of the transit system and energy/power system in order to make informed deployment decisions. A recently completed NITC project, No. 1222 titled An Electric Bus Deployment Framework for Improved Air Quality and Transit Operational Efficiency, developed a bi-objective …

Applying A Mt. Mazama Volcanic Ash Treatment As A Trail Accessibility Improvement, Charles Riley, Ashton Greer, Matthew D. Sleep

TREC Final Reports

A procedure has been developed for implementing a topically applied Mt. Mazama volcanic ash trail surface amendment for improving trail firmness and stability. This project involved implementation of previously conducted Mt. Mazama volcanic research by applying a Mazama Ash and Portland Cement solution over a 0.2-mile section of the Geo Trail at the Oregon Institute of Technology Klamath Falls campus. Testing was performed to verify ideal Ash-to-Cement-to-Water ratios. A procedure was developed and applied for batching and mixing the dry materials on-site, spreading and integrating the dry material with the existing trail surface, and wetting and compacting the surface. After …

Pedestrian Wayfinding Under Consideration Of Visual Impairment, Blindness, And Deafblindness: A Mixed-Method Investigation Into Individual Experiences And Supporting Elements, Martin Swobodzinski, Amy T. Parker, Elizabeth Schaller, Denise Snow

TREC Final Reports

In this report we discuss to-date findings of a project that aimed at assessing individual and environmental affordances in the context of human pedestrian wayfinding of visually impaired, blind, and deafblind travelers in public spaces. Our project afforded collaboration, co-design, and co-creation of knowledge between the investigators, partners at the American Printing House of the Blind and GoodMaps, the Portland State University Digital City Testbed Center, and members of the disability community. The objective of the project was to better understand how different wayfinding aids, that is, wayfinding apps, tactile maps, and verbal route descriptions, are employed by visually impaired, …

Accessing Opportunities For Household Provisioning Post-Covid-19, Kelly Clifton, Amanda Howell, Kristina M. Currans, Gabriella Abou-Zeid, Max Nonnamaker, Paula C. Carder

TREC Final Reports

In this project, we used a mixed-methods study to collect critical information to evaluate the extent to which people modified their shopping behavior, either by choice or necessity, to meet their provisioning needs during the COVID-19 crisis and the following recovery. First, four waves of a cross-sectional survey were administered online to a representative sample of households in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Oregon, and Washington. This longitudinal, comparative study responded directly to a critical research gap and advanced behavioral science by providing a rich survey dataset to support and test theories of behavioral change and technology adoption. Second, focus groups were …

Statistical Inference For Multimodal Travel Time Reliability, Avinash Unnikrishnan, Miguel Figliozzi, Subhash C. Kochar

TREC Final Reports

Travel time reliability is a key metric of interest to practitioners and researchers because it affects travel choice and the economic competitiveness of urban areas. This research focuses on three travel time reliability metrics – buffer index, modified buffer index, and the relative width of travel time distributions. The key novel contributions of this research include using the multivariate delta method to prove that the sampling distributions of the three travel time reliability metrics are asymptotically normal. The asymptotic standard error for the three reliability metrics is derived. The asymptotic normality and the standard error result are used to arrive …

Community Transportation Academy: Course Curriculum And Implementation Handbook, Nathan Mcneil, Keith Bartholomew

TREC Final Reports

A Community Transportation Academy (CTA) is a course that harnesses the knowledge, technical expertise and passions of practicing transportation professionals in a city to immerse a cohort of interested and dedicated community members in transportation issues over a two to three month curriculum.

The CTA curriculum was developed by drawing from the Portland Traffic and Transportation (PTT or Portland CTA) course, along with the Wasatch Transportation Academy (WTA or Wasatch CTA, which was inspired by the Portland course). Planning academy courses in cities around the country are also good models to look to for how to structure and operate such …

Launching The Wasatch Transportation Academy, Nathan Mcneil, Keith Bartholomew, Matthew Ryan

TREC Final Reports

The “Community Transportation Academy” model seeks to break down the barriers for community members to participate in transportation decision-making processes. Since 1991, the Portland Traffic and Transportation Course has held at least one course each year, connecting Portland residents with top planners, engineers, and decision-makers from agencies working on transportation in the region, with the goal of conveying the factors professionals consider, ranging from technical considerations, legal and policy mandates, other tradeoffs, and how the community can engage with and influence decisions. This project sought to implement a transportation academy in the Salt Lake City region inspired by the Portland …

Gis Training In Transportation And Environmental Justice For Promoting Student Success In Steam Education, Joowon Im, Alan Klein, Amruta Sakalker

TREC Final Reports

Transportation land uses have a significant impact on vulnerable ecologies, especially in a rapidly urbanizing region like Dallas-Fort Worth. To study this relationship, the research team will develop a pilot ArcGIS lab course to expose high school students to critical regional tools and technology. This course will demonstrate the connections between transportation planning and design and environmental justice. The College of Architecture Planning and Public Affairs at UT Arlington will partner with CityLab high school in the Dallas Independent School District to develop a four-week lab course curriculum in ArcGIS and other emerging regional mapping technologies.

High school students will …

Mobility For The People: Evaluating Equity Requirements In Shared Micromobility Programs, Anne Brown, Amanda Howell, Hana Creger

TREC Final Reports

Technology-enabled shared micromobility services have expanded mobility for some travelers, but significant barriers to use limit their uptake among certain groups. To address these barriers, cities and professional transportation organizations have undertaken two distinct efforts to operationalize equity in shared micromobility services: 1) drafted equity frameworks in an attempt to clearly define equity within the transportation context and to provide guidelines for what cities should consider when designing equity-based mobility programs; and 2) some cities have attempted to ameliorate access disparities by establishing new requirements for shared micromobility programs. Both equity frameworks and program requirements mark important steps to operationalizing …

Data-Driven Optimization For E-Scooter System Design, Abolhassan Mohammadi Fathabad, Xiaofeng Li, Jianqiang Cheng, Yao-Jan Wu

TREC Final Reports

The objective of this project is to develop data-driven, decision-making models for shared-mobility system design and operation. Specifically, we will use shared e-scooters as a representative system, with the ultimate goal of facilitating an electric shared-mobility revolution that promises a more sustainable future. In the past few years, shared e-scooter systems have gained increased popularity around the world because of their benefits to health, traffic congestion, the environment, and accessibility. As of 2018, approximately 100 U.S. cities have launched shared e-scooter programs, accounting for 38.5 million trips. However, the business model to manage e-scooter sharing remains nascent, with many challenges …

Exploring Data Fusion Techniques To Estimate Network-Wide Bicycle Volumes, Sirisha Kothuri, Joseph Broach, Nathan Mcneil, Kate Hyun, Stephen Mattingly, Md. Mintu Miah, Krista Nordback, Frank Proulx

TREC Final Reports

This research developed a method for evaluating and integrating emerging sources (Strava, StreetLight, and Bikeshare) of bicycle activity data with conventional demand data (permanent counts, short-duration counts) using traditional (Poisson) and advanced machine learning techniques. First, a literature review was conducted, along with cataloging and evaluating available third-party data sources and existing applications. Next, six sites (Boulder, Charlotte, Dallas, Portland, Bend, and Eugene) that represented a variety of contexts (urban, suburban) and geographical diversity were selected. Of these, Boulder, Charlotte and Dallas constituted the basic sites, where one year of data (i.e., 2019) was used for modeling. Portland, Bend, and …

Is Transit-Oriented Development Affordable For Low And Moderate Income Households?, Reid Ewing, Sadegh Sabouri, Justyna Kaniewska, Hassan Ameli, Wookjae Yang, Fatemeh Kiani, Junsik Kim, Douty Chibamba

TREC Final Reports

The transportation and land use planning paradigm is shifting away from segregated uses connected by highways and roads to more compact, mixed-use developments connected by high-quality transit. This new paradigm has brought transit-oriented development (TOD) to the fore, and researchers continue to highlight advantages of this style of well-integrated land use and transportation planning. When it comes to affordability, what counts isn’t housing costs alone but the combination of housing plus transportation costs (H+T). If TODs do, in fact, command higher rents due to increased transit accessibility, this creates an issue of social equity, especially if higher housing costs are …

Understanding The Impact Of Decentralizing Homeless Services On Transportation And Mobility In Salt Lake County, Sarah L. Canham, Jeff Rose, Ivis Garcia Zambrana, Shannon O. Jones

TREC Final Reports

In 2019, the delivery of homeless sheltering services in Salt Lake County transitioned from a centralized emergency shelter—The Road Home Salt Lake Community Shelter and Resource Center (TRHSLC)—operated by The Road Home to a decentralized, scattered site model with multiple “Homeless Resource Center” (HRC) locations operated by multiple service providers. To understand to what degree and to which “proximity” to public transportation and other needed services was achieved, this study examined: 1) how the decentralization of homeless services influenced transportation demand and mobility patterns for persons experiencing homelessness (PEH); and 2) how transportation and mobility changes affected access to services …

Optimizing Housing And Service Locations To Provide Mobility To Meet The Mandated Obligations For Former Offenders To Improve Community Health And Safety, Anne Nordberg, Jaya Davis, Stephen Mattingly, Sarah R. Leat, Mansi Patel, Michael Mitchell, Santhosh Medeti, Craig Keaton, Jobaidul Boni, Jhanvi Manishkum, Alireza Fallahi, Sheida Khademi

TREC Final Reports

Roughly 2,000 inmates return to communities each day in the U.S. Unsuccessful reentry jeopardizes community safety, promotes re-incarceration, and increases costs to taxpayers to support the criminal justice apparatus. Research indicates that strong networks of support reduce recidivism, but most communities remain ill-equipped to successfully support former offenders. Our community partner, Unlocking DOORS in Dallas, TX, is a reentry brokerage firm that coordinates services including housing, mental and physical health services, job retraining, transportation, and parole or probation obligations. This, like most reentry service providers, assists former offenders navigating a patchwork of logistical hurdles including individual offender obligations, scarce offender …

Developing Strategies To Enhance Mobility And Accessibility For Community-Dwelling Older Adults, Kate Hyun, Kathy Lee, Caroline Krejci, Nilufer Oran Gibson, Troyee Saha

TREC Final Reports

Mobility disparities among older adults affect their ability to travel and access services. This project seeks to understand challenges, barriers, and gaps that older adults experience, and develop forms of assistance or educational strategies to fill the varying mobility gaps and meet mobility needs. This study characterizes older adults’ use of existing and potential transportation options, including conventional transit, paratransit, and ride-hailing systems, based on surveys collected from 146 low-income older adults in Dallas, TX. Using the survey data and interview data, we develop two mathematical modeling (a Latent Class Cluster Analysis and agent-based modeling (ABM)) and conduct content analysis …

Development Of Intelligent Multimodal Traffic Monitoring Using Radar Sensor At Intersections, Siyang Cao, Yao-Jan Wu, Feng Jin

TREC Final Reports

Multimodal traffic monitoring is critical for improving mobility and safety at intersections with potential conflicts among various modes of transportation. Traditional traffic monitoring approaches utilizing cameras cannot work reliably during the night and under hazardous weather conditions. We propose to build a new intelligent multimodal traffic monitoring device using the low-cost mmWave radar. The proposed device can reliably distinguish different modes (such as buses, pedestrians, bicyclists, trucks, motorcycles, etc.), and determine the counts, speed, and moving directions of every single target in an urban environment under various lighting and weather conditions. In the study, a low-cost prototype system will also …

Examining The Impact Of Transportation-Related Barriers On Self-Perceived Physical Health Among Adults In The United States, Philip Baiden, Godfred O. Boateng, Stephen Mattingly, Alan Kunz Lomelin

TREC Final Reports

Objective: Drawing from the framework of social determinants of health, the objective of this paper was to investigate the crosssectional association between transportation-related factors and self-perceived physical health among adults in the U.S. while adjusting for known demographic and socioeconomic-related factors.

Methods: Data for this report were derived from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey. An analytic sample of 71,235 respondents aged 18 and 64 years was analyzed using binary logistic regression. The outcome variable examined was self perceived physical health and the main explanatory variable was a measure of household vehicle deficit.

Results: Of the 71,235 respondents examined, 8.9% …

New Mobility For All: Evaluation Of A Transportation Incentive Program For Residents Of Affordable Housing In Portland, Or, Nathan Mcneil, John Macarthur, Huijun Tan

TREC Final Reports

Low-income residents, immigrants, seniors, and people with disabilities - people who are often the most transport disadvantaged and thus stand to gain the most from tools that could reduce transportation costs and time – are often poorly served by new transportation tools and services, whether due to issues of affordability, gaps in technology adoption, unbanked populations, social or knowledge gaps, physical access, or other barriers. The research team worked with the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) to evaluate the Transportation Wallet for Residents of Affordable Housing Pilot (TWRAH). The program provided a set of transportation incentives for low-income participants including …

Evaluating Mobility Impacts Of Construction Work Zones On Utah Transportation System Using Machine Learning Techniques, Ali Hassandokht Mashhadi, Abbas Rashidi

TREC Final Reports

Construction work zones are inevitable parts of daily operations at roadway systems. They have a significant impact on traffic conditions and the mobility of roadway systems. The traffic impacts of work zones could significantly vary due to several interacting factors such as work zone factors (work zone location and layout, length of the closure, work zone speed, intensity, and daily active hours); traffic factors (percentage of heavy vehicles, highway speed limit, capacity, mobility, flow, density, congestion, and occupancy); road factors (number of total lanes, number of open lanes, and pavement grade and condition); temporal factors (e.g., year, season, month, weekday, …

Data-Driven Mobility Strategies For Multimodal Transportation, Yao-Jan Wu, Xianfeng Terry Yang, Sirisha Kothuri, Abolfazl Karimpour, Qinzheng Wang, Jason Anderson

TREC Final Reports

Multimodal transportation systems (e.g., walking, cycling, automobile, public transit, etc.) are effective in increasing people’s travel flexibility, reducing congestion, and improving safety. Therefore, it is critical to understand what factors would affect people’s mode choices. With advanced technology, such as connected and automated vehicles, cities are now facing a transition from traditional urban planning to developing smart cities. To support multimodal transportation management, this study will serve as a bridge to connect speed management strategies of conventional corridors to connected vehicle corridors. This study consists of three main components. In the first component, the impact of speed management strategies along …

Green Waves, Machine Learning, And Predictive Analytics: Making Streets Better For People On Bikes, Stephen Fickas

TREC Final Reports

This project focuses on giving bicyclists a safer and more efficient path through a city’s signalized intersections. It builds on a prior NITC project that tested an app for a fixed-time corridor. The goal of this project is to lay the groundwork for extending this earlier app to include actuated signals. Two machine-learning algorithms are introduced that have a good track record with time-series forecasting: LSTM and 1D CNN. The algorithms are tested on data captured from a busy bike corridor on the south end of the University of Oregon campus. A specific actuated intersection is identified on this corridor …

Applying An Equity Lens To Automated Payment Solutions For Public Transportation, Aaron Golub, John Macarthur, Anne Brown, Candace Brakewood

TREC Final Reports

Many transit agencies plan to automate their fare collection and limit the use of cash for payment, with the goals of improving boarding and data collection while lowering operating costs. Still, about 10% of adults in the United States lack a bank account or credit card, and many either rely on restrictive cell-phone data plans or don’t have access to internet or a smartphone, making it very challenging for these riders to ride. In light of these potential challenges, this project was developed by a group of transit agencies and consultants interested in the barriers faced by riders, and what …